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Germany divided: Baselitz and his generation. From the
Duerckheim Collection

6 February – 31 August 2014
Room 90

Featuring over 90 works by some of the leading names in
contemporary art, this exhibition explores how six key artists
redefined art in Germany in the 1960s and 70s and negotiated with
the recent past, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Half of the
works on display are by Georg Baselitz (b. 1938), and 34 of the
works in the exhibition, including 17 by Baselitz, have been
generously donated to the British Museum by Count Christian
Duerckheim. An additional loan of around 60 prints and drawings
from the Duerckheim collection make up the rest of this fascinating
exhibiton. The exhibition forms part of a series of shows and
public programme examining Germany in 2014. A display of medals
will show how Germany saw WW1 and an exhibition looking at key
moments in the long history of Germany will open in October
2014.

The works come from one of the world’s finest private
collections of contemporary German and British art. Count
Duerckheim has presented the Museum with key works by Georg
Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Blinky Palermo, A.R. Penck, Sigmar Polke
and Gerhard Richter. Count Christian Duerckheim formed his
collection of contemporary German art largely from the mid-1970s to
the early 1980s. After he first came across the work of Baselitz in
the early 1970s, he decided to form a collection that would
represent, through key works, the dramatic history of his own
times. Count Duerckheim was born in Saxony, near Baselitz’s
birthplace, and has always shared a strong bond with the artist
which led to him forming one of the most significant collections of
his early works in private hands.

The gift included a group of eleven drawings by Baselitz from
1960 to the late 1970s, together with six prints from the same
period. They cover the principal phases of his career from the
Pandemonium drawings of the early 1960s, the development of his
ironic ‘Heroes’ in the mid-1960s, the subsequent fracturing of his
motifs to the eventual inversion of the motif from the late 1960s.
There are also an important examples by Richter, including his
Pin-up and Installation drawings, the characteristic Ice Age meets
cybernetics stick-figures of Penck, as well as sculptural drawings
by Lüpertz and Palermo, and a drawing and sketchbook by Polke
satirizing the ‘economic miracle’ of post-war reconstruction in
West Germany.

All the artists in this exhibition came originally from eastern
Germany and migrated to the West, the majority before the borders
were sealed in 1961. Some like Richter and Penck, who was the last
to leave in 1980, had trained in East Germany, but it was in the
West that their careers were established. As a generation they came
out of the experience of growing up in the aftermath of a defeated
Germany and its subsequent partition in 1949. Much of their work is
informed by the sense of collective guilt experienced by the German
people over its recent past, the country’s physical and
psychological destruction, and the division of the country by two
opposing ideologies – the democracies of the free West and the
Communist socialist system of the Soviet bloc.

Count Duerckheim said ‘I am pleased to give this gift to the
British Museum so that the important graphic art of 20th century
Germany is reflected within its international collection. The
exhibition and my collection is a story of change and movement, of
life in progress. I have always felt this constant change and have
gone with it, very much inspired by the artists I have collected.
For me as collector it is a great honour to show my collection and
to be a donor to the British Museum’

Notes to Editors:

To accompany the exhibition, a catalogue will be published by
British Museum Press: Germany Divided: Baselitz and his generation.
From the Duerckheim Collection, by John-Paul Stonard. This
scholarly and fully-illustrated volume will feature new research
and previously unpublished material from major public and private
collections. Available from the British Museum Book Shop and online
at britishmuseum.org. Priced £35.00 (hardback).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme of
lectures and events.

The Department of Prints and Drawings contains the national
collection of Western prints and drawings. The department provides
access for members of the public to carry out research in its Study
Room, which is open to all. Visitors may ask to see any of the
50,000 drawings or 2,000,000 prints in the collection. The
collection is also available to research online at britishmuseum.org